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NACDL is committed to enhancing the capacity of the criminal defense bar to safeguard fundamental constitutional rights.
NACDL harnesses the unique perspectives of NACDL members to advocate for policy and practice improvements in the criminal legal system.
NACDL envisions a society where all individuals receive fair, rational, and humane treatment within the criminal legal system.
NACDL’s mission is to serve as a leader, alongside diverse coalitions, in identifying and reforming flaws and inequities in the criminal legal system, and redressing systemic racism, and ensuring that its members and others in the criminal defense bar are fully equipped to serve all accused persons at the highest level.
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This session provides an overview of PATTERN and Earned Time Credits, explains how you can utilize these tools to benefit your client, and discusses how to proceed if the BOP fails to provide the time credits your client has earned. One of the prison reform provisions of the First Step Act, the Earned Time Credit program allows eligible individuals to be released early from prison or transferred to prerelease custody based on those credits. Along with BOP's risk assessment tool, PATTERN, Earned Time Credits can be an effective way to significantly decrease your client's sentence.
Comments to the Bureau of Prisons Office of General Counsel regarding a proposed rule to apply good-time credits earned under First Step Act provisions to individuals in BOP custody with convictions under the D.C. Code.
Coalition letter to Governor Greg Abbott, of Texas, regarding his executive order (GA-13) refusing to allow release of inmates from state detention facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The FIRST STEP Act directly impacts accused and sentenced prisoners in myriad ways. Defense attorney Todd Bussert discusses Bureau of Prisons-related aspects of the law, including changes to the time credit calculus, avenues by which prisoners can earn both earlier pre-release transfers and placement on supervised release, and avenues to petition courts for reductions in sentence for extraordinary and compelling reasons. Bussert points out that implementation of some of the Act’s provisions may be delayed.
Brief of Amici Curiae Public Defender Service and National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in Support of Appellant.
“Good time credit” results in real time being deducted from an inmate’s sentence and is gained by maintaining good behavior during incarceration. See 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b). All incarcerated individuals, other than those serving life sentences, are eligible for good time credit.
Coalition letter to Senate and Senate Judiciary leadership regarding a technical fix to the Elderly Home Detention Pilot Program of the First Step Act addressed in the proposed H.R. 4018 (2019), already passed the House, especially given the current health concerns of COVID-19 expected for this population.
U.S. Sentencing Commission Overview of the First Step Act.
A time table by the Federal Defender Program of Chicago that illustrates the length of a sentence in days, months, and years served in a penitentiary.
Brief of Amicus Curiae the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in Support of Petitioner (on petition for a writ of certiorari).
Amicus curiae brief of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the National Association of Federal Defenders, the Federal and Public Community Defenders in the United States, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Law Deans and Faculty in support of petitioners.
